the black diver

[quote="Read"]When smolts are released they are released into the "wild" where they take their chances along with the rest of the wildlife. I don't keep hens but if I thought my angling activities were detrimental to the balance of nature I would certainly give it up. With regard to vermin does that term only apply to wildlife that upset you?

Sorry if I'm coming across all aggressive I'm just a tad cranky at the moment. :x[/quote
feathers a bit ruffled are they :lol: :lol:

I see a mention that cormorants have been wiping out the fish in the Colligan!!

Rubbish - it the poachers that have been killin em every Christmas with however many years. They sell the eggs to guys who make salmon paste or some stuff with em and then sell off the rest of the fish - all full of spawn and melt.

worse than any black divers I have ever seen!!!

Apologies ...joining this thread a bit late ...my internets been down

The way I see it is ... the Comorants and any other Marine wildlife, fish to survive ....we on the other hand fish for sport/ pleasure.

They have the right to the fish ..not us

Just my point of view


Andy

does that mean your giveing up fishing?
leave more fish in the c for cormorants
why dont we all give it up theyed have plenty to eat then

No " guest" it does not mean i'm giving up fishing.
So what would you do ? shoot all the comorants ?
Does anything else eat the smolts ? should we kill all the smolts predators?

Then we'd have loads of lovely happy salmon swiming in our waters
I suppose your one of these "game fishermen" I love meeting in the tackle shops, when they catch a pike they just throw it up the bank, sure it kills all the fish. :roll:


Andy

Try 700-800 on a reservoir in the UK all eating their fill of 1kg per day??

Serious problem!!

These birds are now native to inland fisheries and are decimating fish stocks.

Blame the EU and greed and those who harvest the seas to get the ingredients for fish feed.

Colin

lets not get tied up on this conservation rubbish! if we are going to do it right i'm afraid that ALL PIKE would be removed and killed as they are a non native fish (in Ireland)we have tinkered with the ecology of Ireland since man got here in about 6000BC much of what we cherish is man made (eg. peat bogs)if you want to return Ireland back to as it was 8000 years ago i guarantee you would not like it! about 90% of the plants and animals are mans introductions once man upset the balance it is encumbant on him to keep tinkering with it, if this means killing a few cormorants so be it the alternative is to bring back wolves and get rid of just about every thing else!!!

I agree there needs to be a management of all aspects of the environment to improve it or even keep it in a constant state. Its no good thinking that if you leave nature to look after itself everything will be fine. Fish stocks, bird stocks and the habitat needs to be controlled...

however there needs to be organised strategys that are backed up by legislation, enforcement and investment from the powers that be (locally nationally and globally). It is a sad state where the individual feels they have to take steps to put things right (as they see it) by killing this species or that, but at least there aim is to do good even if they are often ill informed.

People that exploit the environment for greed are way more damaging…from the poacher or polluter all the way up to the government setting fishing quotas that are beyond believe.

It’s important to realize that the environment we live in is not natural and action must be taken to persevere the fish we have left, and repair damage done but we need to follow clear plans with a scientific background, not independently follow the simplistic logic of bird eats fish so kill the birds = more fish.

We need a government or agency in place that follows the advice given on these matters, and implements solutions, enforces laws and spends some of is massive tax revenue on securing the future of fishing


That’s my 2 cents anyways :)

The notion of us being able to 'manage' an 'environment' to keep it in it's 'natural' state is utter tripe.

The best thing we can do is interfere with nature as little as possible.

An excellent example of the stupidity and arrogance that leads us to believe we can manage an environment may be found in the study of such attempts in the Yellowstone National Park in the US.

In an effort to manage the park to keep it all natural, they have, over the years, shot wolves, had to reintroduce them, culled elk, bison, beaver, cougar; you name it, they screwed around with it. Including the plants.

The park wasn't 'natural' when it was set up, the native Americans had been tinkering with the ecology for yonks as they went about their daily life - without the intention of management, preservation or any of the rubbish we spout today. There was no way, ever, to maintain the park in a 'natural' state, whatever that was - we're not sure what even constitutes 'natural'.

Furthermore, by it's nature, any environment will change over time anyway, without the help or hindrance of man. It's in a constant state of flux and evolution. It is not our job or place to hold the environment in stasis.

If we all got it into our heads that our job, as a species, as far as the environment goes, is to avoid as much as possible having an adverse impact on it, we'd all be better off.

If we can learn nothing else from the Yellowstone story, we might learn that if some environmental factor causes a poulation shift of sorts, we can't take a quick look, decide we understand al the forces at work, and then cull something to 'restore some balance'.

Its no good thinking that if you leave nature to look after itself everything will be fine. Fish stocks, bird stocks and the habitat needs to be controlled...

Oh, how on earth did this planet survive before we came along....???

If anyone out there wants to get their own fish stocks, bird stocks and habitat and control it, feel free. I recommend they buy a really good tractor and join the Irish Farmers Association....

I have to agree with Sandman for the most point as I believe all of ecology is ever changing. The issue is that man (and women - I'm not sexist) makes extreme change. I'm convinced that some changes are for the good but change by extreme measures (rate of change, size of change) cannot be viable as other sections of the ecosystem will then fight for the void that appears.

We do not need to stop the cormarants (although culling in certain areas may have value), we need to change our entire approach.

The ecosystems manage themselves - occasionally we could tweak a thing or two but wholesale rape of the seas will always have a grave effect.

The chaos theory is a perfect illustration of what a small change can make and we would do well in our approach to all things that we do.

By introducing small fish of various species into rivers we are doing nothing more than appeasing the press and a few townies who have decided to live in the sticks on the weekends!

If you are from the countryside or a coastal village you can see the differences. Where I live we used to have a fabulous sea trout river - its been bashed by the same mindless idiots that leave detrius behind them when mackeral bashing.

We need education for all to respect our environment and money to buy out fishing quotas and fishing fleets. Why the F*** are we as a nation investing in mega trawlers? There are not enough fish for the smaller boats as it is.

I dare say that this type of approach is contributing to the problems "The Atlantic Dawn will join an elite fleet of super trawlers which, despite representing less than 2% of the world’s 3.5 million fishing boats, have the capacity to seize almost 60% of the global catch"

Its greed on behalf of the ship owners, greed on the banks, greed by that idiot Pat the knob Gallager making sure his little powertrip is sustained and our lethagy sitting on our fat asses doing sod all about it.

I'm not for a minute suggesting that we "do a Rainbow Warrior" but we must retire these vessels and as a race we must resist the urge to have everything available to us every day of the week.

When doing all of that then I think there may be a case for culling cormorants!

Applause, at least one guy gets it.

I'm not a fan of seals, cormorants or anything else getting out of hand and munching fish left, right and centre but at the same time I've come around a good bit of late from the idea of blasting them out of it.

The problem with the change of behaviour or location of these has to be seen for what it most probably is: the result of man's action on their food - the fish.

I think culls are a measure of last resort, not the first thing we should try.

In the case of the cormorants, I would hope that as the fish stocks recovered, these would return to a more marine environment and leave the lakes and rivers alone. If the fish stocks in the sea were back to what they were a couple of decades ago - before the cormorants started to shoved out - and they then didn't return to the sea, then if they could not be trapped and returned to the sea, it **might** be necessary to cull them to protect the lakes and rivers. Whether that would work or not, or what the side effects might be, I don't know.

Sometimes, when an environment is changed unnaturally, various species survive by colonising slightly different habitats. Even if you could restore the original habitat to it's previous state, some species will not move back.

The trick is, don't screw with the environment if possible. As quarterflounder says, we would all be advised to be aware of Chaos Theory. If you're not familiar with this, often referred to as the Butterfly Effect, see:

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition ... 32,00.html

Sandman, if you haven't read Michael Crichton 'State of Fear' i think you would really enjoy it he see's things in the same light as you is a good book.. I agree with most of what you say but i still feel that we need to take steps to protect what is left and repair the damage done, its fine to say that the bests thing to do is as little as possible but we have set in motion processes that mean things need to be controlled and managed now, and if we need proper protection laws and enforcement of them, if we don't activitly protect what we have left someone else will expolit it.

I know this thread is on the black diver/shore angling

but these canadians have documented the bottom falling out of deepsea fishing, by catch etc.

more farms on the way!

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8533

sandman, it is already too late for the "lets leave nature to look after itself school of thought" and this is especially true in ireland. a very good case could be made for every mammal species currently in ireland being a human introduction - many of them in the last 200 years. Ireland has no native mammals, no native amphibians, no native reptiles. the only native fish are lough neagh pollan, trout and char although a case could also be made for salmon, eels and shad which are not actually fresh water fish but do migrate into fresh. very few of the trees are native, oak, hazel, birch and willow - pine was here but died out and had to be reintroduced.
in short man has messed about so much with the flora and fauna of ireland that it is in essence a man made environment and therefore nature is incapable of maintaining it only man can maintain it.

Maybe "Man" should stop managing and begin nurturing instead.

Instead of fitting nature around us maybe we should fit around nature? The trouble is this would not fit in with capitalism - where only profit is key. All things are discussed on TV in terms of "The Economy" - fine we need something but something that is based on exhausting resources by finding bigger and better ways to mine more ore, take more fish, pollute more rivers (with nitrates, hormones etc. - forget the damage we do with toxics), drill more oil. The list goes on.

Who takes a bus rather than drive? Who refuses to eat cheap food? Who does not mind throwing out a beer can into the rubbish rather than recycle? I'm guilty. Why do we buy into what advertisers and celebrites tell us to buy? Do I need 11 fishing rods - probably not but I've got them. Do I need a car and a motorcycle no - but I've got them. I've been brainwashed by society to work hard so I can buy stuff (that I don't NEED) and it's only in the last few years that I've matured enough to realise that my "want" for things is driven by others and that I'm leaving the world a worse place for my children by my actions.

Only when profit and greed are removed from the cornerstones of world economies and replaced with sustainable theologies will REAL environmentalism grow.

Staple foods, supplemented by seasonal foods and occasional treats is where we should be returning to. It's boring I'll admit and I would not look forward to it as I love nice food but slow food is a way forward. My brother introduced me to slow food a few years ago and it is a great idea.

The world cannot sustain exponential growth in it's population and it is only when populations are culled by nature taking it's turn will we begin to understand.

Happy Days :D

When I say we should stop trying to manage the environment, that doesn't mean sitting on our hands. Ideally, we ought to be looking at the impact of what we do now, and trying to minimise the adverse impacts.

For example, we do need commercial fishing. But there are may ways we could do it that would have less of an adverse environmental impact than the methods we practice now.

Any removal of fish should have a number of rules that should not ever be broken. One is that we should not be hammering top predators - indeed new research is indicating strongly that the action of higher predators is much more important in the maintenance of healthy levels of prey species than previously thought.

Equally, we should not be hoovering up sandeel, sprat, smelt and other smaller prey fish as this destabilises the whole food pyramid, not only for fish but also birds and marine mammals.

The whole concept of managing fisheries based on a MSY (Maximum Sustainable Yield) has to go. This is the equivalent of removing as many nuts, screws, washers and bolts from an aircraft as it will get off the ground without - any little thing going wrong then will have disasterous results. Continually fishing a stock year on year to the point where it can theoretically only just stay at the same level is asking for trouble. All it will take is a bad spawning year or two or a spot of disease and there goes a species. And that doesn't count the wholesale under-reporting of what is actually caught.

Another thing we should not, under any circumstances be doing is damaging the physical environment when fishing. Dragging trawl nets across the sea floor, smashing all in their path, is a definite no-no. Same with leaving gill nets ghost-fishing all over the place.

There is a lot you can do to help conservation, all it takes is making a few life choices. Next time you go down to the chippy, pass on the ray, rock salmon, cod, haddock, whiting, monk, plaice and sole. Have a chickenburger instead. Or sausages. Just not fish. Stop supporting the demand that drives fishermen to push the envelope on the fish stocks.
When they are eventually forced to show that the fish they produce come from really sustainable sources due to market pressure, they'll cop on. Not before.

Similarly, say no to farmed fish. Fish farming is a prime driver for the fishmeal industry - consumer of between 3 and 7 tons of mackerel, herring and other mostly oily fish per ton of farmed fish output. Don't help these polluters stay in business, together with the fishmeal plants and industrial trawlers that supply them. Hopefully this way the gannets, gulls, cormorants etc will have enough to eat around the coast and won't have to head up the waterways for a feed.

Next time you are angling, take home one for the pan for a change, if you like fish. After all, you practice conservation, have a right to the fish as much as some commercial fisherman - why not treat yourself? Just refuse to buy or eat commercially caught or farmed fish as often as is possible.

sandman i think if you look at your anti fish farm arguement a bit closer it is flawed. given that people want to eat fish the most enviromentally friendly way to get them is by well run fish farms (i will not enter into the taste debate here!). one tonne of wild fish will eat just as much as one tonne of farmed fish, it is just that we catch the fish for it, the question is, is drift netting /seine netting for sandeel more or less damaging to the sea than trawl netting? it has to be better, and given the lack of fish in the sea there is a surplus of sandeel that are now not being eaten by other fish these we can utilize to feed farmed stock.
one a final note please do not promote battery chicken as a fish alternative it is supremely polluting, cruel and wasteful. oh yes and they eat FISHMEAL!!!

Last edited by ray on Tue Jan 10, 2006 1:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

sorry double entry!

i dont think there is a surplus of sandeel in the sea at all! i think in our area in the last couple of years the numbers seem to be down, perhaps this has led to the numbers of fish present being less also???

"I'm sure, like Phil, that there is an awful lot less sandeel in the water than there was - hence why the birds are heading off elsewhere to live?

It gets into a bit of a negative feedback loop, apparently. When there are less bait fish, the birds go live somewhere that the living is easier. It seems that oodles of birds, all happily crapping in the sea 24/7/365 provides food for the photoplankton which feed the zooplankton that a lot of the bait fish live off. That cycle appears to have been upset somehow.

As regards the wild VS farmed debate there are many ways to argue the toss. I'll agree that on the face of it, farmed fish sounds like a solution. In theory, a 5lb wild fish should need to have eaten the same amount as a 5lb farmed one. Lets take salmon as the obvious example.

A farmed salmon is reared in a cage at sea. It is fed for most of it's life an artificial fishmeal diet, mainly mackerel, herring, blue whiting and so forth, as I gather. Not the salmon's natural diet. So much so that a couple of weeks prior to slaughter, the salmon have to be fed a dyed food to give that typically pink 'salmon' colour to the flesh, which without this dye would be pretty much white.

So, we're taking from one part of the food web to feed another that would not, in nature, normally happen.

Also, all the food that the salmon fail to snaffle as it sinks through the cages lands on the sea bed below and rots.

Keeping what is not normally a shoal fish in shoaling proximity for extended periods has other side effects - parasites, pollution from fish faeces, a whole raft of diseases.

Some of the drugs/chemicals used to treat these problems are less than environmentally friendly. Take Ivermectin. Lovely stuff. Starts to kill all known crustaceans at a concentration of 4ng/l. To save anyone the math, think about a mouthful in ten thousand olympic swimming pools. Just one of an increasingly lethal cocktail that farmed salmon are treated with - because the parasites are gradually becoming more resistant. They're breeding the better bug. It's well known that salmon farming has decimated sea trout stocks anywhere it's been set up. Worse still, they're usually sited in estuaries where wild salmon and sea trout have to migrate through. Talk about making it easy for the parasites....

And here's the next bit of misinformation that's fed out by fish farmers at every opportunity. We don't use product X to control sea lice. It really doesn't matter that much what they use to kill sea lice. The few chemicals that can be used all act in round about the same ways and the nett effect is to kill or paralyse invertebrates. Lovely for all the marine life for miles around the cages.

Let's go back to the fish food. Like any concentrated material, it's more of what was in the raw material, and we know this is also true of dioxins, pcbs and heavy metals, like mercury, lead, cadmium etc. Wild fish, apex predators in particular (like tuna and swordfish as well as salmon) will naturally concentrate a certain amount of these pollutants, but nothing near the level that a farmed fish will have.

I'm not done with the colourings either. The colourings astaxanthin (E161j) and canthaxanthin (E161g) are used to dye flesh pink, though the permitted concentration of canthaxanthin was reduced by the EU in 2002 due to links with retina damage in humans.

Fish are treated with antibiotics, some of which may remain as residues, and routinely injected with vaccines. The fungicide malachite green (a carcinogen) has been banned. (But traces have since been found in four samples of Scottish salmon and two from Norway since).

Imported farmed fish can be much worse. I remember one case where farmed fish from Chile, I think it was, had been coloured with a fabric dye.

Farmed salmon contain more fat than wild fish. People will tell you that fatty fish is good for you. Yup. In moderation. So if you eat farmed salmon, eat smaller portions than you would wild fish. I often look at the deformed offerings passed off as salmon in supermarkets and note the ever present sign on the wall saying to ""eat 2 portions a week"". I often wonder if the flip side of the sign says ""any more could seriously harm your health - not suitable for children or pregnant or breast-feeding women""....

So, no farmed fish in my house, I'll tell you.

As regards the chicken (I didn't mention battery farmed, although most chicken is), and hell, lets include the sausages, it's all mass produced and the raw material probably was fed on fish meal at some stage, or at least feed enriched with fish oil. You could always have a Quorn burger. :lol:

It's easy to get into a situation where we attack argument or statements as flawed but in fairness, unless you write a whole essay and cover all the bases, somebody can always play devil's advocate and say a statement is flawed, or incomplete or innacurate etc.

I'll agree that a well run fish farm might be the answer to pressure on wild stocks. My problem with the current implementation of fish farms is that they are anything but well run.

There appears to be a very much 'out of sight, out of mind' approach by fish farmers to what they do to the environment around them, the consequences of the diseases and parasites they are fostering seem to not concern them in the least, the siting of the farms could not, in most cases, be worse if you tried. Not feeding farmed fish a 'natural' diet. List goes on....

I'll leave it up to everyone to make up their own mind about fish farming. The internet is loaded with resources you can check up to inform yourself - please, be sceptical of anything I or anyone else writes - research it for yourself. It's just my view, based on what I've read or discussed.

This is as good a place as any to start: http://www.salmonfarmmonitor.org/"

Half way down your post Sandman I honestly felt like I was on the wrong website and that I'd somehow managed to stumble on to salmonfarmmonitor. You've raised some valid points about the problems with aquaculture, although I think you indulged yourself in a bit of scaremongering too. Similar problems exist in all food production industries, indeed the ills, both environmentally and socially of industrially produced chicken, pork, beef, corn, wheat, rice etc. vastly outweigh that of aquaculture.

So if your not going to eat farmed fish/shellfish then by right, unless you want to appear hypocritical, then you ought to also refuse to bring any other industrially produced foodstuffs into the home. This is why I find it difficult to stomach (no pun intended!) the likes of salmonfarmmonitor. If they spent as much time targetting industrial agriculture in England and its associated environmental impacts as they do harrassing Scottish coastal communities then I would give them some credence.

Aquaculture has alot to offer, some species especially shellfish leave virtually no ecological footprint....in this day and age that is something we should look to support not damn. Just my opinion for what is an interesting discussion.

Pete

I'm a newbie here and don't want to be controversial therefore...but I've seen lots on this subject relating to Scotland, where I do most of my fishing. I have to agree with Sandman. The arguments put forward by the industry (at least in Scotland) appear to be designed largely to mislead rather than inform. They still reject for eg that there is any correlation between farms, sea lice blooms and reducing stocks of salmon and sea trout. The link seems crystal clear... And the employment figures produced have not been updated in 15 years (despite massive shrinkage in reality) which has to be deliberate distortion. The industry now employs a small number of badly paid people, in companies that suck up huge public subsidies (large grants gtiven for job creation) with profits mostly reptriated (where they exist) to Scandinavia.

And the arguments supporting the use of sand eels as food aren't always very solid. It seems that humans are a darned sight more efficient than predators at catching sand eels. And the farm populations we are trying to feed are now enourmous so the impact is pretty huge.

I don't know what the answer is: my actions are not going to change the demand. But I don't eat the farmed stuff anyway. It often tastes horrible, and you have no idea what checmicals are in it. Plus - the good bits (like the Omega 3 oils) - are much reduced in farm fish (replaced with other not so good fats), so even that the "it's healthy" argument isn't very strong.

Bruce Sandison - who runs the Salmon Farm Monitor - does a pretty solid job of exposing the close relationship of the industry and the politicians in Scotland (Jack McConnell's - first minister - brother is something senior with Marine Harvest for eg: which could be linked to the ridiculously easy ride the salmon farms get and laughable punishments given when they pollute perhaps?). Is there anyone similar in Ireland?

Cheers,

Swithun